Heaven (Part 2 of 3)

*reupload from 2015 due to Blogger shenanigans*

Majorie Dickens, who was a mom of two and working to pay for some medication for her bad back, put on the porcelain mask and black robe and stood in the crowd. She knew that to her left was Danny Frederick, who was going to AA meetings and fixing his marriage, and that to her right was Abbey Jenkinson, who smoked weed and was wondering if her boyfriend was cheating on her. They were friends. But she didn't need to talk to them, not right now.

She knew that if she looked up, she'd see the high-vaulted ceilings of the chapel, made to what the architect thought was Gothic style. She knew that if she looked left or right, she'd see more people, robed and masked just like she was. But she didn't need to, because she was amongst the Rising, and she was safe and amongst friends. She looked fowards instead, at the pulpit, and applauded when Father Kristov tottered his way up to it.

Kristov was pushing eighty. He wore the robe with purple trim, because he was the head of the congregation, but he was everyone's friend. He wasn't in charge. He never told them what to do. He just gave them the truth.

White hands gripped the sides of the pulpit, and his masked face swerved back and forth like a sentry as he spoke. His voice was strong for his age, and had a bass quality that could have got him into a swing band if he'd been born twenty years earlier. It was a strong voice that carried the truth.

The truth about the Kobbers. The Kings of Beasts. The devils.

Majorie listened as he told them what they all knew. The Kobbers were wild, untamed, like the God of the Old Testament. They worshipped themselves and drank and fornicated where they pleased, and where they went, death followed. She sighed on cue when he told them just how many had suffered and died in the first two years of Manhattan, and how those who had most needed help were rejected, ignored - even killed. She took up the chant of "No" when he asked the three questions. And then she sang the hymn. It was "All Creatures Great and Small" today.

Kristov had said something new. He'd said that the people the Kobbers associated with, the Hublanders, were diseased, from a city that rotted like an apple. He said the immortals that lived there were just as callous as their mortal friends, and twice as capricious. He called it a Platonic Sodom. Majorie had never been to the Hub, and now she never wanted to go.

He'd also said that there would be a way, soon, to remove all of them from the face of the planet, and that way would be shown to the faithful. Majorie hoped it was her it would be shown to.

Then they sang another hymn. The service ended, and Majorie took off her mask and robe, had some biscuits and a chat with Wanda, who was sixty next week. Then she left to pick up her children from school.

---

"Okay, Sean. It's like this, right? I am not going to let you starve to death. Or die. Or waste away. I'm in your head, and whilst you've spent the past hour in a completely understandable catatonic shock about how a demon ruined your life, I've been busy. I learned that, right now, in this current... Dimension, hallucination, world, whatever - wherever we are, there is no network in the world that can hold me as I exist. Meaning if you die, I will have to chop my metaphorical arms off and hide in the cyber-dumpsters for the rest of my miserable existence. Fuck no. Also, I'm your friend and you're mine. At least, after three years of living in your head being privy to every thought you've ever had, I like to think that. So I don't WANT you to die. That'd suck, and blow my chances of getting back at old turkey face.

"So let me put it this way," finished Dimitri. "Sean Carte, if you don't get out of this shitty bed in this shitty apartment right now, I'll make you."

Sean said nothing. Then he pushed himself up, a tree falling in reverse, and stood. His eyes bored into the yellowing wallpaper.

"Thank the creator. Right, turn around and go into the next room."

Sean did so, moving puppet-like.

"Good. Okay, there's a wallet there on the kitchen countertop. It's yours now, if my guess is right. It's got a shitload of money - enough for us to get started. The currency is simple enough, the money's just made of paper. You're gonna need it in five minutes, so let me explain the concept of rent real quick."

Five minutes later, Sean paid the rent on his new apartment on the outskirts of Las Vegas, ten million years in his past.

Purgatory (Part 1 of 3)

*reupload from 2015 due to Blogger shenanigans*

It wasn't working.

Sean tried to raise his blade, but it felt like lead in his arms. Another step would probably kill him. He didn't dare look away, because if he looked around, he'd see what had happened to his friends. So he had to keep looking straight ahead. He wish he didn't have to.

"You're all aloooooooone~"

A pair of violet streaks of lighg screamed from the darkness. The sword deflected them, each parry shooting up his arm in a lance of red-hot agony.

"Dimitri? Buddy?" Sean's voice rang small in the darkness around him.

"I'm here," came the voice in Sean's head. It sounded a bit like him.

"Talk to me."

"Well, everyone's dead."

"Really? Hadn't noticed."

Sean charged and leapt, his muscles burning, and cleaved at the blackness. Nothing happened, and he landed on the stone floor with a gasp.

"Not doing so hot there, champ." Dimitri's voice wavered with with concern.

Sean gulped for air, forcing himself to stand.

"Nah," he began, "I'm really fucking peachy kee-"

The impossible limb hit him from an impossible angle. He flew for some time, and then hit the ground and rolled until he eventually stopped, lying on his back. Two of his ribs broke when he hit the floor, and he'd dropped the sword. He suddenly understood, lying helplessly on the floor, that he was dead and there was nothing he could do about it.

"All your friends are dead, Sean~"

"Home run hitter," came Dimitri.

"Gurgh," responded Sean. The floor was ice cold.

"Hey, Sean?"

"Ghn?"

"Where do Artificial Intelligences go when they die?"

"Dnno." It hurt to breathe. Sean tried anyway, and then coughed up a small spray of red.

"Really? Sucks. I hoped there'd be baseball."

It came out of the shadows, looming over him like a monument. It looked like a bird that had somebody had plucked and pickled. The skull was blind, but rows of yellow, lidless eyes swivelled madly along the neck. The sagging meat of the humongous body contorted as it stomped over to Sean's prone form. The beak pulled back into a grin of needle teeth.

"Oh, I am enjoying this!" The monster placed a single massive talon on Sean's chest and pressed down. More things cracked.

"Are you scared?"

Sean didn't have the energy to even shake his head, but he thought "Not anymore."

"I guess I'm not either." Dimitri sounded mournful. "I hope there's somewhere for me to go."

Sean shut his eyes. He hoped so to. He hoped that Leah and Jerry and Sam and Vicky were waiting for him. He hadn't had a chance to say anything... anything of note? They just died. It had been so stupid. All that hard work, the quests, the near-deaths, the fun and the fear and the friendship...

Maybe they'd play baseball.

"See you soon, buddy," he whispered.

The weight lifted.

"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" The voice was horrible, flutey, with emphasis on all the wrong syllables. "I mean, you came so far and tried so hard! You were comprehensive about it, too. I forgot about the cave in the lake, honestly. Must have been one your lot made up. Old Wives' Tales and that."

Sean realised that he wasn't going to die, and terror shot through him.

"Nowadays people don't get medals for trying," continued the monster. "But I am a big believer in encouraging free thought in my subjects, so I think you ought to get a reward!"

A claw picked him up and raised him. Carrion breath washed over him, and he coughed up more red.

"I'm going to revive your friends! They'll have another chance at bringing me down and ending my reign for the people or whatever. Isn't that great? But, oh dear!" The thing giggled. "They won't have you, oh Fearless Leader! You lead them in here to die, so I suspect they'll be much better off without your guidance. I mean, it is your fault they died in the first place!"

Lord Meshugah grinned with infinite teeth.

"No, Sean Carter, I have a better plan for you..."

Sean tried to scream -

*

Sean woke up somewhere completely different.

Duty

It was an hour later. The hardest part turned out to be breaking the door down.

The Gadian had been using his own product. A haze of smoke almost hid the reptile amongst the tall, waxy plants in the room. It wasn’t illegal to grow Ambrosia – you needed a permit for more than a few plants, but it was the weakest drug you could grow. The danger was if you mixed it with something else, and the policeman found plenty of those things under the kitchen sink.

The Gadian didn’t have a permit, and could at least be reprimanded for that. No way to prove he was going hardcore. The policeman cuffed him and buzzed a drone over to let the poor guy spend an afternoon in a cell. Not that he wanted to stay. The apartment looked like it was turning into a trash heap.

Now they were walking through one of the multi-tier markets that Ashringa Apartments were famous for. The apartments were not one building, but a series of colossi dedicated to keeping as many souls in one place as possible. Some Libertarian idea, probably. It had monorails which the policeman never used. The markets were a menagerie that sold anything and everything, but mostly counterfeit clothes and souvenirs. His powered armor was in a mechanic's shop somewhere in here, although he never used the same one twice in a row.

A stench of grease, mechanical and fried, permeated the air. Piche's face crumpled more than usual.

“Smell is bad-bad,” the dog complained.

“It’s pretty nasty, yeah.”

He fished in his jeans pockets and hooked a few coins. A few dollars - not worth a lot in a place where currency changed more than fashion. He trooped to a stall manned by a tiny floating shark and bought a sandwich, a can of soda that tasted like syrup, and a chocolate bar. The candy went to Piche.

“Isn’t chocolate poisonous to you? No offense, but...”

“Piche has strong stomach,” replied the dog, mouth full.

Some things were mysteries.

He walked through the market, eating the sandwich. It had reasonable approximations of bacon and tomato in it. Around, above and below the catwalks came the calls and voices of thousands, tens of thousands of people. Buying, selling, bartering, singing. Compressed life.

Most people, he'd learnt, were well-meaning but stupid. Many crimes were often explained by the short phrase "I only wanted to." For example, I only wanted to stop him messing around. Or, I only wanted to see what it was like. People would do the stupidest, most hurtful things in good faith. The Gadian from earlier, for instance. Then you had the low level offenders, filled with a stupid hate that made animals of them. Easy to deal with, but hard to scrub out. You couldn’t change their minds with a crowbar and a planet to brace yourself against.

Then you had people who had woke up one morning, thought carefully about it, and decided that they wanted to hurt other people. He'd only met one person like that.

His watch beeped. He pressed a button and Officer Ramirez appeared. Ramirez was half-Spanish, half-Asian. He was an okay guy, maybe.

“Hey, Big C.” A blurt of static obscured the hologram for a moment. “Where you at?”

“Small time shit, man. Same as always.”

Ramirez didn’t grin this time. “We need you. Some stall owner's phoned in. Kid stole a bunch of food from his junk. We last pinged the car on Botticelli and we need someone to take it down."

"My suit's in the shop, buddy. I'll have to take a jet rig."

"Well, hurry up! Whoever's piloting that car is gonna break out of the cordon before long. You'll need to -"

"A fucking SBF, I know." The policeman pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'll be there in five, dig?"

"You better, chingu." Ramirez' hologram snapped out of existance.

SBF. Suicide By Falling. Intercepting a vehicle by jumping from a tall building and using ancient jetpacks to try and land on top. No prizes for guessing where the name came from. It wouldn't be so bad if he had his armor - he might only break a few ribs.

"Sorry, Piche," he said to the dog. "I'll try and not die."

"Good luck." The alien scuttled off into the crowd.

The policeman, for the umpteenth time since starting his new job, began to run.

Ballroom

2:28 PM, 16/2/96, 16/29/96 AUC, Ashringa Apartments, Arkadia, Hub

The policeman was up before his radio alarm flicked on.Technically he didn't need the sleep, but he liked the rest, and his mom had insisted he sleep regularly when he was a kid. Old habits.

He padded to the kitchen in his boxers, humming along to the electroswing. The apartment was small enough to hear the music through the walls, and the music his neighbours were listening to. Or making, on occasion. A new couple had moved in upstairs.

He opened a cubpoard and tried to choose between cooking and not. He could taste the additives in the cereal, so that was out, but he didn't feel up to putting something more complicated than bacon together. Above his head, a Mangadorian tried to perform the ritual monthly mating cycle without upsetting the six-foot tall policeman downstairs. Genderless aliens were weird.

Fuck it, he'd eaten last night. He could go for another day or so on that.

He felt more up to it after a shower and putting some casual slacks and a t-shirt on, and decided to revert his decision and cook up some bacon. The radio had flicked to traffic reports - a crash that he knew Officer Ramirez was dealing with, some congestion on McQueen Street - nothing serious. Bacon was good. It held his attention. He considered leaving at that, but eggs didn't take long and his bread wasn't out of date and hey, bacon and egg sandwich. With coffee. Excellent.

Halfway through his meal, there was a knock on his door. Nobody interrupted his bacon sandwiches. He stomped over to the front door and flung it open.

An alien designed to be the most pitiable thing in the world looked up at him. It was three feet tall and resembled a cartoon dachshund in the middle of being slammed into a wall. He relaxed. Piche didn't technically live here. He was an informant who worked for the highest bidder, which, due to his lack of a home and preference for eating other people's refuse, meant basically anybody. The policeman was currently paying him twenty bucks to keep an eye on everything in his apartment block.

"Hey, Piche. What's up?"

Piche snuffled. "Hey, boss-boss. Got something for you. Is good-good."

The policeman blinked. "Uh, hold on a second then."

On the plate was the last of his bacon sandwich. Piche's species were scavengers - they ate what they could, but better meals were worth their weight in gold. He drained the last of his coffee, picked it up, went back to the door and tossed the remains into Piche's waiting maw.

"That good enough?"

Piche chewed slowly. "Very good-good. Boss-boss pays well, so Piche tells you. Gadian on the fifty-second floor, room 23, he growing Ambrosia. Could smell it when I went by his room. Stank bad."

The policeman sighed.  His powered armor was in the shop, he was off-duty and the Gadian would probably kick his ass, but he said "Okay then" anyway.

His parents had put a sense of heroic duty in him, for some reason. But he hoped the Gadian was out. Just in case.

Pursuit

3:45 AM, 15/2/96 AUC, Arkadia, Hub

"Stop, in the name of the Law!"

The wiry man did not stop in the name of the Law. With a laugh, he leapt, the rags of his shirt billowing behind him, and clattered onto the next rooftop along. He began to run without a look behind him, a devil in tailored clothing.

With a snarl, the policeman followed. The tiles bucked under his feet, and he almost didn't make the jump. Powered suits, he decided as he followed in a whirr of nano-motors, were not an advantage. How did anyone wear these? Not that, legally, he was allowed to wear it in the first place.

The criminal darted around a slab of air vents, losing himself in a cloud of steam from the street below. The policeman didn't make the jump blind, his visor flicking through spectrum in a rainbow. When he landed, almost within grasping distance of the captive, the asphalt erupted into lead slivers. He lost a second goading the suit into a sprint, a second that his target used to barrel his way into the markets.

Civilians parted like the red sea. Being hit by half a ton of metal would be good grounds for a lawsuit, if any of them recovered enough to make phonecalls and felt like taking on the Arkadian police. The policeman dashed through them, darting around obstacles - the thin man upturned a ramen cart, knocked over a stall of fake jeans, darted left and right like a minnow, and the policeman either leapt or barrelled through every one. But he wasn't gaining.

Suddenly, a darting motion took the chase down an alley, rich in the stench of piss and stale barbecue sauce. The policeman felt the shoulder pads of his armor scrape the walls, but the narrow aperture didn't matter. Ahead was a solid brick wall,  a complete dead end -

That filled with a white tear, a cut in space that was blinding to look at. The thin man leapt into it without hesitation.

"Fuck!"

The policeman slapped his hand on something on his belt. The worst part of a chase - if the crim had a leaper, the device now blinking at his waist would pull him back here after six minutes.  He had the only one in the department, and every time a suspect went dimension hopping was a chance for him to break or lose it.

He leapt, suit motors screaming -

forever it's forever in here much much longer and longer

A cliffside, topped with dead grass like a hopeless man's comb-over. A sea of pitch black and a sky of burnt copper. Another world.

As the policeman chased, dangerously close to the crumbling edge, he looked up and saw the bronze clouds rent by a myriad of colors and shapes, dragon-shapes, hissing and spitting as they writhed and breathed ultra-violet fire. A name came to his head - Tiamat? Some nursery rhyme he'd been told as a kid, maybe. Not important. Focus.

The dragon-shapes hurt to look at. He averted his gaze and chased the thin man, who was already diving into another white aperture. Feet pounded on grass dirt stone bone flesh forever and ever and ever and landed on rough stone tiles.

A dark hall stretched in front of him, full of statues of things with too many tentacles and eyes. In the flickering lamplight, he first saw the criminal bolt through a door, then the gathering of cultists in red robes between him and the exit. They had drawn various sigils on the floor in blood, and had tied a voluptuous young woman to an altar. She seemed as annoyed by the interruption as the cultists. Odd.

"Excuse me," began the lady on the altar, "do you mind?"

The policeman ignored the question, breaking back into a sprint and pushing through the gathering of cultists. He heard a shout of "How rude!" but didn't care. He wrenched the ancient wooden door open, saw a flash of ruined shirt and followed it. He was losing ground.

A labyrinth now, a maze of corridors and banners and tapestries depicting various nasty gods. Left, right, right again, left, over and over again. Down a flight of stone stairs, and through another rip of blankness into the forever oh yes its much longer than you think -

A swamp, black and thick and choking. He could feel the dimension anchor on his hip vibrating, getting ready to pull him back. Time was running out. He had seconds. Something gave way under his feet, and he realised he was slowly sinking into the murk.

So was the criminal, a few feet ahead. Seizing the chance, the policeman lurched forwards, his suit motors howling as it tried to combat the quagmire. One step, two step, sinking too fast and too heavy to stop himself, he reached out, grabbed -

backwards, backwards through the forever

And hit the ground in the alley, caked in mud from the chest down. The thin man was there too, trying to wrench free of his glove and out of his shirt. The other hand came up, crackling with electricity.

"Arnold Grengis," said the policeman, "you're under arrest!"

He slapped the man across the back of his neck. Arnold - for it was he - jerked like a hooked fish, then fell limp.

Sirens wailed, somewhere in the distance. People crowded around the entrance of the alleyway, watching. He stood, gasping for air, leaning against the brickwork, wrenching his helmet off. At the sight of his eyes, the crowd took a pace or two backwards.

God, he wanted a drink.

Royalty

There are two kinds of royalty.


The dwarves and the elves have never got on, ever. The dwarves thought of the elves as arrogant upstarts who stole the majesties and riches from the old Dvergarholms. The elves thought the dwarves were arrogant old men who squandered what they had on pointless ventures and effigies. In some ways, they were very alike.

The skeletons that descended upon the two outposts - one elf, one dwarf, eyeing each other over the Strang River - didn't think anything of either of the races. They came in droves, silent except for the clink of metal on bone. By the time the alarm was raised, it was much too late to respond.

The elves and dwarves, for all their differences, died very much the same.

When the horror had ended, the horde did not take gold, or weapons. They did not burn down flags, or destroy the outposts, or seize their new holdings. They piled up the corpses on a cart pulled by fleshless horses and vanished into the fog, as silent as they had come.

Two days later, the cartographers of Ardea noticed the Ivory Forest had expanded by half an inch westwards, across the entire border.

And thus did Ostaria, the Empire of Bone, expand.


Light swept into the room, and prince Tak-Sin stood back from the window to admire himself in the full-length mirror, the sunlight playing off his nude form.

Nice. Still as refined and delicate as ever. Long blue hair that went down to just above his hips. Toned legs, slim body, and a face that could pass for beauty in either gender. No wonder the Duke of Calra fell for him so quickly. Then again, Duke John Estwald, of the province of Calra, was a handsome young man who unfortunately was both inexperienced in ruling and suffering from an orientation that his stuffy old father didn't like. Thankfully, Tak-Sin was more than happy to accommodate both of those things.

What a lovely party. What a lovely dress he'd worn - although he couldn't seem to find it in the scattered items on the royal carpet. What nice food. What a fun evening.

What opportunity.

He could hear Morgan in his head, the eidolon lurking in a corner of space-time and begging for blood. He dismissed the spirit with a mental wave of his hand. There was plenty of time for that. No, John wasn't quite ready. His estate was rich, and had connections to the merchants of Belgrazia. Handsome young merchants who would be looking for financial aid, and who might be lonely on cold nights waiting for their ships to come in, and who might turn a blind eye if somebody close to them might want something special brought in on those ships.

Later, the merfolk would give the slient command, and poor Duke Estwald would be stabbed in his sleep by a madman, or take a nasty tumble and break his neck. But until then, there were still things to do. He could have a lot of fun with John. More parties to attend, official functions to laze around in looking for the inevitable replacement, more wine to drink and gold to spend, more lovely nights in.

Speaking of which...

Tak-Sin padded over to the four-poster at the far end of the room, climbing on and crawling on all fours over the sleeping form in the middle. He made sure to brush John's body with his own as he lay on top, and relished the flush of the young man's face as the young Duke awoke to see the results of last night.

"Good morning, dear," the merfolk whispered, and kissed him.

He really was very handsome. It would be a shame to kill him. Maybe he could enslave him instead.


There are two kinds of royalty. Those who wear an iron fist, and those who wear a velvet glove over the top of it.